Reverse-Gentrification of the Literary World

Akashic Books

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Subject: Black Interest

Featured Black Interest Titles

The Angels’ Share

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A Jamaican father and his adult son travel across the island together in a touching and humorous novel that explores family reconciliation.

Black Lotus

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Finding the Black Lotus murderer is Detective Wolf’s chance to avoid an Internal Affairs investigation. That’s when things get personal.

Black Music

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The long-awaited reissue of the sequel to Amiri Baraka’s seminal work, BLUES PEOPLE, and latest selection in the AkashiClassics Renegade Reprint Series. This collection of essays by Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones includes a new introduction by the author and Q&A by Calvin Reid.

Cake

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The highly anticipated second title from Akashic’s groundbreaking street-lit imprint, The Armory, curated by author Kenji Jasper.

Caught Up

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Author of the mega–best seller B-More Careful (350,000 sales) is back with an irresistible hard-boiled crime story.

Conduit

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Chris Abani’s acclaimed Black Goat series presents the debut collection from one of America’s most promising young poets.

Discretion

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Elizabeth Nunez’s reissued fourth novel is a haunting, mesmerizing exploration into the often destructive price of passion.

Dog War

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The highly anticipated new novel and debut US publication from the legendary Jamaican author of The Lunatic and The Duppy.

The Duppy

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Oddball sexuality, acts of perversion, and out-of-order behavior from the acclaimed Jamaican author of The Lunatic and Dog War.

How funny is this social satire? Akashic Books’s pledge to our readers: Laugh out loud at least once or your money back. Seriously.

eel on reef

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A truly exciting American debut from a Nigerian writer on Chris Abani’s new poetry imprint, Black Goat, with an introduction by Kwame Dawes.

Game World

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Launching Akashic’s new Black Sheep YA imprint, an adventure novel in a video game turned reality, with giant spiders, malevolent hummingbirds, a not-quite-yellow-brick road, and preteen children learning how to be heroes!

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Getting It Right

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Half-sisters Kara and Alex—one the biracial product of foster care, the other of dysfunctional privilege—struggle for redemption and forgiveness.

Gomer’s Song

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Award-winning poet Kwame Dawes explores the insidious nature of power and the limits of protest for Chris Abani’s Black Goat poetry series.

Got

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The first title from The Armory, a new high-quality urban noir imprint edited by Kenji Jasper.

Grace

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The reissue of Elizabeth Nunez’s moving exploration into trust, family, redemption, and love.

Haiti Noir

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Akashic recruits Danticat, one of the truly great contemporary writers, to edit this timely volume featuring stories set both before and after the devastating 2010 earthquake.

I Love You Too

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Bob Marley’s first and most famous son, Ziggy, extends his devotion to youth with his debut children’s book.

Knucklehead

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A fierce, intelligent, and often hilarious novel about a young African American attorney who struggles to keep his cool in the personally and politically turbulent ’90s.

Limbo

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An African American man confronts a heart of darkness when his family moves from Los Angeles to a small town in Norway.

Lost Canyon

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In Revoyr’s most thrilling novel to date, four backpackers embark on a trip in the Sierra Nevada that quickly becomes a disaster.

Loving Donovan

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A long-awaited reissue of this deeply thoughtful novel about hope, forgiveness, and the cost of loving Donovan, a complex man with a shattered history.

Makeda

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The debut title from Akashic’s Open Lens imprint: a universal tale of family, heritage, and the ties that bind, from the nationally best-selling author Randall Robinson.

On the Way Back

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Kobbé’s hilarious social novel centers on a comically failed business venture on the island of Anguilla, brilliantly echoing A Confederacy of Dunces and Herman Wouk’s Don’t Stop the Carnival.

Providential

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Best-selling writer Colin Channer’s debut poetry collection tackles the unlikely literary figure of the Jamaican policeman.

Swing

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An erotic drama about four sexy couples and one swingers’ club where their fantasies and nightmares collide.

Tales

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This reissue of a 1967 story collection shows a mind in motion, featuring writing that is provocative, witty, bitter, and aggressive.

The Warmest December

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The long-awaited reissue of McFadden’s best-selling second novel praised by Toni Morrison, USA Today, Washington Post, and others—published simultaneously with McFadden’s new novel Gathering of Waters.

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Forthcoming Titles

The Necessary Hunger

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Forthcoming: 3/5/19

Akashic Books reissues Nina Revoyr’s inspired and groundbreaking 1997 debut novel about women’s basketball, class, racial identity, and friendship.

Around Harvard Square

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Forthcoming: 4/1/19

Race, class, and hormones combine and combust when a Harvard freshman and his two friends attempt to join the staff of the Harpoon, the school’s iconic humor magazine.

Bivouac

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Forthcoming: 4/2/19

The death of a Jamaican man’s father raises questions about the father’s political endeavors, and about the plight of 1980s Jamaica.

Home Girl

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Forthcoming: 9/3/19

When Naomi, a fourteen-year-old white girl, is placed with a black foster care family, her life takes some dramatic twists and turns.

Black Lotus 2: The Vow

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Forthcoming: 10/1/19

Against her better judgment, assassin Kahllah (a.k.a. the Black Lotus) is called upon to try to “eliminate” a mysterious band of thieves calling themselves the Ghost Squad.

Nairobi Noir (Kenya)

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Forthcoming: 2/4/20

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o anchors this truly fascinating first East African installment in the Akashic Noir Series.